LITTLE ROCK — It took a little more than 33 hours for Arkansas lawmakers to breeze through a marathon special session called to address rising teacher health insurance rates. But the ongoing fights from the session may linger for years.

From efforts to overhaul the teacher insurance program after legislators boosted its funding to potential challenges stemming from the failed effort to redistribute excess property tax revenues from some school districts, lawmakers face plenty of unanswered questions.

The most immediate question regards what changes are needed to the teacher insurance program to avoid future bailouts from the Legislature, which tapped $43 million in surplus funds this year and will redirect other state money in future years to alleviate premium increases that otherwise would have risen by as much as 50 percent.

The moves by the Legislature are expected to lower the rate increases to 10 percent, but it also sets the stage for longer-term reforms.

“This will be an issue the General Assembly will have to deal with for years to come,” House Speaker Davy Carter, R-Cabot, said.

One of the first changes will come next month, when the terms for members of the board that oversees the teacher insurance program will end and new members appointed through one of the proposals Gov. Mike Beebe plans to sign into law. The move was a direct challenge to the board, which the legislation said had “failed to fulfill their mission and provide a stable and actuarially sound system of health insurance benefits for public school employees.”

The more substantial reforms, however, will likely come from a task force created to come up with long-term solutions on how to make the insurance program more sustainable and avoid crises like the one that prompted last week’s session.

“It gives us time to take care of these teachers and school employees, find out what the problem is and how we need to fix it,” said Rep. Tommy Wren, D-Melbourne, who chairs the House Insurance and Commerce Committee.

The consequences of the property tax measure’s failure may be the biggest unknown from the session. Aimed at addressing a state Supreme Court ruling that Beebe and other state officials said threw Arkansas’ school funding reforms into question, the proposal would have allowed the state to retain excess property tax revenue from districts where higher property tax collections pushed the districts’ total school funding levels above those set by state law.

It also would have phased out the excess revenue from eight districts where collections are currently above that funding level.

The proposal was indirectly related to the teacher insurance premiums, with the excess money to be used to make up for some of the state facilities fund that was being tapped to alleviate the rate hikes.

But the property tax issue quickly overshadowed the primary reason for the session, with shades of the divisions that the Legislature saw during the long-running school funding fights that brought them back for special sessions over the past two decades.

“Those people who believed in Lake View and fought hard for it surely must think they’ve seen this before,” Beebe told reporters, referring to the lawsuit brought by the Lake View School District that led to the funding reforms.

A 1996 constitutional amendment approved by voters requires each school district to levy no less than 25 mills of property tax for maintenance and operation of schools. Districts are allowed to levy more than 25 mills. A mill produces $1 for every $1,000 of assessed property value.

Beebe and other supporters of the proposal noted that the court in its ruling last year suggested that the Legislature could give the state authority to withhold the funds.

The plan, declared dead after it was tabled by a House committee, stirred vocal opposition from several Republicans in the House and Senate who said it amounted to the state raiding local funds.

“Passing it would hurt literally thousands of kids and teachers and school employees in those districts,” said House Majority Leader Bruce Westerman, R-Hot Springs.

Beebe and supporters of the plan insist the 25 mills isn’t local money, noting that it’s a state-mandated tax rate intended to maintain equitable funding across all of the state’s school districts. Beebe said he doesn’t plan on bringing the proposal back during next year’s fiscal session, but supporters say they hope to try again in 2015’s regular session.

Until then, it’s a debate that could wind up in all too familiar place for veterans of the state’s school funding fights.

“As with all other aspects of school funding in Arkansas, there’s a good chance that it’ll find its way back to court,” said Sen. Johnny Key, R-Mountain Home, who chairs the Senate Education Committee. “But that’s whether we ... took no action or if we took action, there’s a good chance that this issue would be back in court. And that’s just the nature of school funding.”

Andrew DeMillo has covered Arkansas government and politics for The Associated Press since 2005.